What We're Reading

Cosmologists are preparing to cast their sharpest-ever eyes on the early Universe. From an altitude of 5,300 metres on Cerro Toco, in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Simons Observatory will map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — sometimes called the afterglow of the Big Bang — with a sensitivity up to ten times greater than that of the previous gold standard, Europe’s Planck space probe.

While the Top500 list ranks the 500 biggest high-performance computers (HPCs) in the world, its cousin the Green500 re-ranks the same 500 supercomputers according to their energy efficiency. For the last three iterations of the list, Henri — a small supercomputer operated by the Flatiron Institute in New York—has been named the world’s most energy efficient high-performance computer.

People have long scratched their heads trying to understand how life ever got going after the formation of Earth billions of years ago. Now, chemists have partly unlocked the recipe by creating a complex compound essential to all life — in a lab.

Astronomers have detected an enormous gamma-ray bubble that could be a source of the Milky Way’s most powerful cosmic rays — high-energy particles that rain down on Earth from space.

Five patients who got tainted growth hormone injections developed early Alzheimer’s decades later.

Microfluidic systems redefined biology by providing platforms that handle small fluid volumes, catalyzing advancements in cellular and molecular studies.

In an experiment involving sophisticated superconducting apparatus cooled to within a whisker of absolute zero, and brass weights stuck to an electrical bicycle wheel, physicists recorded a minuscule gravitational tug of 30 quintillionths of a newton on a particle less than a millimetre wide.

On 6 February, NASA plans to launch a new satellite tasked with monitoring microbes in the ocean and aerosols in the atmosphere. The mission, called PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem), will improve scientists’ understanding of the carbon cycle.

An uncanny resemblance to the Death Star might not be the only intriguing thing about Saturn’s moon Mimas. It could also harbor a vast ocean of liquid water beneath its pockmarked exterior.

Researchers have used quantum computers to solve difficult physics problems. But claims of a quantum “advantage” must wait as ever-improving algorithms boost the performance of classical computers.